Grails query to filter on association and only return matching entities - sql

Question

I have the following 1 - M (one way) relationship:
Customer (1) -> (M) Address
I am trying to filter the addresses for a specific customer that contain certain text e.g.
def results = Customer.withCriteria {
eq "id", 995L
addresses {
ilike 'description', '%text%'
}
}
The problem is that this returns the Customer and when I in turn access the "addresses" it gives me the full list of addresses rather than the filtered list of addresses.
It's not possible for me to use Address.withCriteria as I can't access the association table from the criteria query.
I'm hoping to avoid reverting to a raw SQL query as this would mean not being able to use a lot functionality that's in place to build up criteria queries in a flexible and reusable manner.
Would love to hear any thoughts ...

Answer 1

I believe the reason for the different behavior in 2.1 is documented here
Specifically this point:
The previous default of LEFT JOIN for criteria queries across associations is now INNER JOIN.
IIRC, Hibernate doesn't eagerly load associations when you use an inner join.
Looks like you can use createAlias to specify an outer join example here:
My experience with this particular issue is from experience with NHibernate, so I can't really shed more light on getting it working correctly than that. I'll happily delete this answer if it turns out to be incorrect.

Answer 2

Try this:
def results = Customer.createCriteria().listDistinct() {
eq('id', 995L)
addresses {
ilike('description', '%Z%')
}
}
This gives you the Customer object that has the correct id and any matching addresses, and only those addresses than match.
You could also use this query (slightly modified) to get all customers that have a matching address:
def results = Customer.createCriteria().listDistinct() {
addresses {
ilike('description', '%Z%')
}
}
results.each {c->
println "Customer " + c.name
c.addresses.each {address->
println "Address " + address.description
}
}
EDIT
Here are the domain classes and the way I added the addresses:
class Customer {
String name
static hasMany = [addresses: PostalAddress]
static constraints = {
}
}
class PostalAddress {
String description
static belongsTo = [customer: Customer]
static constraints = {
}
}
//added via Bootstrap for testing
def init = { servletContext ->
def custA = new Customer(name: 'A').save(failOnError: true)
def custB = new Customer(name: 'B').save(failOnError: true)
def custC = new Customer(name: 'C').save(failOnError: true)
def add1 = new PostalAddress(description: 'Z1', customer: custA).save(failOnError: true)
def add2 = new PostalAddress(description: 'Z2', customer: custA).save(failOnError: true)
def add3 = new PostalAddress(description: 'Z3', customer: custA).save(failOnError: true)
def add4 = new PostalAddress(description: 'W4', customer: custA).save(failOnError: true)
def add5 = new PostalAddress(description: 'W5', customer: custA).save(failOnError: true)
def add6 = new PostalAddress(description: 'W6', customer: custA).save(failOnError: true)
}
When I run this I get the following output:
Customer A
Address Z3
Address Z1
Address Z2